This fall, we’re welcoming a new face to the campus center with the opening of a vegetable stand in Harvest Market. The UMass Student Farm is now selling organic, fresh, and ultra-local produce grown less than ten miles from campus. The UMass Student Farming Enterprise (SFE) is a student-run initiative supported by the University in which students gain experience planting, harvesting, cleaning, packaging, and selling food grown on-site, providing them with the knowledge and practice needed to manage a farm.

​Stop by Harvest to check out the display of this season’s veggies grown and harvested by fellow UMass students. Buying produce from the Student Farm is a fantastic way to reduce your impact on the environment and eat fresh, local foods while supporting a student-directed initiative that is helping to produce the next generation of forward-thinking farmers. 

Our dear friend the trash monster is retiring, and we need your help to design a replacement! Lurking in Blue Wall Cafe near the dish return, the trash monster has stood as a reminder to students, faculty, staff, and visitors to campus that the waste we create does not disappear – it simply ends up somewhere else. 

While it is important to “think before you throw,” it is even more essential to “think before you take.” This means considering how much food you are actually going to eat (rather than how much you think you want) and whether or not you really need to take it in a to-go container. Ceramic plates and bowls and metal utensils are always available in the Campus Center. Think carefully and choose wisely; the trash monster is watching all of us.

In order to continue to spread waste awareness, we are looking for a new group of students who want to participate in a unique campaign to reduce waste with their own creation. If you have an idea for a new trash monster design, check out the entry details here. Entries are due Tuesday, October 2nd, and the winning concept will receive $500 to use towards building the project! The winning design will be announced on Thursday, October 12th

​The meeting closed after several small group discussions where participants discussed what it would take to increase poultry production in Massachusetts including attracting new farmers and allied investments, as well as increasing the likelihood of success through processing, storage, and infrastructure improvements.

This week, the 23rd annual Tastes of the World Chef Culinary Conference hosted by UMass Dining has returned! The theme of this year’s conference is The Power of Food, which encompass all aspects of food, including nutrition, community, food security, and sustainability. The conference focuses on the unique power and influence that high-volume food service operators and campus chefs have on our flawed food system. Chefs have the power to make our food more fair, healthy, and sustainable through their tremendous purchasing power and their influence on the food choices of young consumers. The annual Chef Conference hopes to empower chefs to question norms and tradition, ask questions about where the food they are serving is coming from, and to push innovations in our food system forward one meal at a time. Hundreds of participants registered for the five day long conference, attending workshops, presentations, and competitions to improve their own culinary skills, waste reduction strategies, and sourcing practices.

​Thanks so much to everyone who attended this year's conference for making it such a success!

​Be sure to check out the Tastes of the World Chef Culinary Conference next year from June 3rd – June 8th, 2018!  ​

Photos by Keith Toffling.

We started with our crew last week, and so far a lot has been accomplished. We began with a giant pile of wood chips from a local landscaping company. Every year, the paths in the permaculture gardens must be covered with wood chips. The chips deter weeds from growing, hold in moisture, and keep the gardens looking fresh and new. We spread about 25 cubic yards of wood chips in Franklin garden alone.

Wood chips or an alternative mulch are often utilized in no-till agriculture. All of the UMass permaculture gardens are maintained without tillage or turning of the soil. Tillage is used to prepare beds for planting crops, but it has many down sides. It increases erosion and loss of organic matter. Tilling the soil also disturbs microbes, fungi, and worms until they no longer reside there. No-till is a practice in which farmers do not till their soil and instead keep the soil covered and plant directly into the un-plowed earth. There are some difficulties to doing this, but it is better for the plants, microbes, and environment.

In the permaculture gardens, we spread wood chips in areas where we do not want weeds to go, like in the paths. To plant our crops, we dig right into the soil without any bed preparation or plowing. Once the crops are planted, we cover the surrounding soil with straw to prevent weeds and hold moisture in. This is a perfect environment for plants to grow and microorganisms to thrive. There is never a shortage of worms in a no-till system, and we have plenty in the permaculture gardens. Worms actually will feed on the wood chips and come to the surface to do so. In their travels, they aerate the soil which increases it ability to support life.

​We must start with the soil if we are to have healthy ecosystems. In the permaculture gardens, our soil is top priority and always cozy and covered.

Thank you to Xochi Salazar and Lena Fletcher for all of your hard work and dedication to hands-on student learning!

NRC 185: Sustainable Living  in the 21st Century is only offered in the spring. However, NRC 100: Environment and Society is also instructed by Professor Lena Fletcher and is still open for fall enrollment!

Get your hands dirty in Franklin Permaculture Garden this Spring Semester! Join us for fun and food for thought!
​
Volunteer hours are every Thursday and Friday from 2:30 pm - 3:45 pm and will start March 23rd weather permitting. Click here for UMass Permaculture volunteer hour updates.

​Join us to generate a toolbox for self-care methods that center healing from racial trauma and create sustainable activism. UMass Permaculture will provide a make your own organic lip balm station, as well as a DIY herbal tea bar. Other community members will share their knowledge and practices for self and community care.
​
This event will take place Wednesday, March 22nd from 4:00 pm - 8:00 pm in the Student Union Ballroom. Check out the Facebook event page for more information! ​

Dive deeper into mushroom exploration with mushroom expert John Michelotti of Catskill Fungi! Attend this workshop to help us revamp our shiitake growing system in the Franklin Permaculture Garden. Small, take-home shiitake logs will be available on a first come, first serve basis.
​
This workshop will have two sessions on Wednesday, March 29th in the Franklin Permaculture Garden from 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm & from 4:15 pm  - 6:15 pm. Check out the Facebook event here. 

​Although the gardens on campus are closed for the season, UMass Permaculture is still hosting some exciting educational events to wrap up this semester:a film screening of Fresh, and a Handmade Holiday Gifts workshop! ​Both will be free and open to the campus community! 

​

Jess Yu is a junior Economics major with a minor in Environmental Science. Growing up, she loved to tend to her vegetable garden with her parents, pick flowers, and play in the park. And as she started to learn about environmental degradation and issues such as climate change - she wanted to play an active role in promoting conscientious thinking and environmental education. She believes that raising awareness of ecological and environmental issues will act as a driving force of successful and feasible change. After all, “you have to know a system before you change it.” 

Through her Economics background, Jess hopes to bridge the gap between environment and business, She is intent on fighting against greenwashing in popular culture and committing the principles of sustainability to heart. In particular, she also cares deeply about issues such as poverty, social inequality, and food insecurity.

In her free time, Jess enjoys binge watching sitcoms, hanging out with her beloved sorority sisters, exploring new places, drinking tea, and reading humorous celebrity memoirs. On campus, she facilitates a sustainability-focused seminar called Eco-Rep and is involved with cultural groups. She also volunteers to give back to the organizations in and around the Pioneer Valley.

Kayleigh Boucher is a sophomore and a Natural Resources Conservation major. She is from Beverly, Massachusetts and grew up visiting her family's farm in Vermont. She has always loved animals and nature. Kayleigh is passionate about social justice, human health, and the environment and how these issues are all connected. She is especially interested in studying food systems, food justice, and sustainable agriculture. 

Kayleigh hopes to empower others to care about social and environmental issues and inspire them to do all that they can for each other and the natural world around them. She believes, as Jane Goodall once said, that "what you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." 

In Kayleigh's spare time she loves making art, cooking, spending time outdoors, visiting the ocean, and being with her friends and sisters. On campus she is involved in the UMass Divestment from Fossil Fuels Campaign, Talking Truth, the Real Food Challenge, Plant-Based Nutrition Club, and the iCons program. She is also an Eco-Rep facilitator and the Vice President of the Climateers, a student group on campus for students that care about the environment. 

​Last week, we had two important visitors to our UMass Campus. The first was Commissioner John Lebeaux of the Department of Agricultural Resources. The second was Andy Kendall of the Kendall Foundation.
​​We informed our guests of the vast improvements we have made to our dining halls in the past fiscal year, more specifically in local and sustainable purchasing. $2 million was spent on Massachusetts farms & businesses - a 17% increase from last fiscal year. Including Massachusetts, a total of $3.5 million was spent on New England area farms and businesses - a 30% increase from FY 2015. Along with the increase in total expenditure, there were increases in spending for sustainable alternatives in every single food category from FY 2015. The most notables increases were exhibited through spending on dairy (68% more than FY 2015) as well as produce (55% more).